Welcome To The Month Of May

Well, the Month of May certainly got off to a strange start yesterday. It was strange enough that the month would start with the IZOD IndyCar Series on a street circuit on another continent. But yesterday’s race bordered on the bizarre. There was a race, but it only ran for fourteen laps. There was rain about an hour before the race started. No problem for a street circuit – just put on the rain tires and go racing. Right? Wrong. For the second year in a row, the São Paulo Indy 300 was red-flagged due to excessive water standing on the track. Last year’s rain cleared up – yesterday’s did not.

In the fourteen laps that did run, however, there was quite a bit of action. The nightmarish season of Helio Castroneves continued, as he didn’t make it past the second turn. This time he was squeezed by Dario Franchitti who went wide, but given his recent history – Helio probably should not have been that ambitious at the start on a wet surface. His wrecked car also collected Simona de Silvestro and Danica Patrick. Tony Kanaan’s car struck Danica’s, received suspension damage and injured Kanaan’s left wrist. The good news is that all of those cars were able to be repaired during the red flag. The bad news is that they are all nine laps down.

After cleaning up that mess, there was one re-start. Scott Dixon spun in virtually the same spot as the other accident. Dixon’s spin caused Sebastien Bourdais and Justin Wilson to both spin. Those cars were able to continue allowing for a few laps of green flag running. But the conditions were unbearable (and unwatchable). Ryan Hunter-Reay backed his car into the wall causing rear-wing damage. Vitor Meira hit the wall hard with his back end. Rafa Matos sustained damage as well. Mercifully, race control decided to end the carnage and bring out the red flag. After a two and a half hour wait – the field, along with the repaired cars, took to the track for a few laps under yellow. It became very obvious very quickly that this wasn’t going to work.

The race has been re-scheduled to run at 8:00 am EDT today, live on Versus. The forecast isn’t that great for today, so set your DVR for extended time. INDYCAR made the right call. There was no visibility and running in those conditions would have been a joke, at best. At worst, the drivers were being put at great risk just before the Indianapolis 500 – the biggest race of the season. Most of the drivers agreed with the call. Most, except for EJ Viso. He said on Twitter; “Ridiculous. Is barely raining. This would (be) a normal race day in England. Don’t understand why we didn’t race”. There is so much irony in that comment, you fill in the punch line.

So they’ll try again today. That means I have to avoid the internet & e-mail throughout the day at work, then go home tonight and watch it. I’ll have my usual wrap-up here tomorrow.

Month of May Broadcasts: With the Month of May officially underway, there are a couple of things to take note of. Beginning tonight, Trackside with Cavin & Kevin goes nightly from 7-8 EDT Monday through Friday throughout the Month of May. Also beginning tonight, will be The Talk of Gasoline Alley with Donald Davidson. Donald will be on seven nights a week throughout the month, leading up to Race Day. Donald will immediately follow Curt & Kevin from 8-9 EDT and on weekends from 6-8 EDT. Both shows can be heard live at www.1070thefan.com . This year, listeners will be able to e-mail their questions of a nostalgic nature to Donald. The address is: askdonald@1070thefan.com .

Also, Versus is finally giving the IZOD IndyCar series a mid-week show. Kevin Lee, Lindy Thackston and Robin Miller will host a live and unscripted one-hour show each Tuesday at 4:00 PM EDT, so set those DVR’s.

May Schedule: Last year, I got a little ambitious at the beginning of the month and vowed to have at least one post per day throughout the month. I kept the pledge, but it was difficult. This year, my load at work is about triple what it was this time last year, and I can make no such commitment. While I will obviously continue my usual Monday, Wednesday & Friday routine; I will post some additional articles up here on odd days throughout the month, beginning with tomorrow’s re-cap of today’s race. When the rest will be, I’m not sure. I’ll announce them on Twitter (@Oilpressureblog) the night before. If you don’t do Twitter, just check back on days I don’t normally post.

New Addition For Oilpressure: Yesterday quietly marked the two-year anniversary of Oilpressure.com. I’ve said before that I started this site with much hesitation after the urging of some close friends and family members, and it seems to have worked out OK. For a while now, I’ve had a few people urge me to put up a Facebook page in conjunction with this site. I don’t do Facebook. I’ve never done Facebook. I don’t really know how to do Facebook and I don’t even have a personal account there. But I learned how to blog and how to do Twitter (which I really enjoy for getting IndyCar news quicker than anywhere else), so I guess I’ll learn how to do Facebook. Besides, Susan Scruggs is a Facebook whiz, so she will be helping out quite a bit with it util I get the hang of it. It’ll be a work in progress for a while. All I have there for now are a few pictures. I guess it grows from there. Anyway, it’s up there under the name Oilpressureblog. Go check it out.

That’ll about do it for now. Check back tomorrow for a race re-cap. I sure hope that this was just a blip in what should be a tremendous Month of May.

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This entry was posted on May 2, 2011 at 4:01 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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6 Responses to “Welcome To The Month Of May”

If you have Facebook, friend George (you will recognize the Oilpressure guage out of the thousands of George Phillips out there). We tried to friend too many people and got blocked from friending–this from a SOCIAL network? And “Like” Oilpressureblog…

Like the CART race at Surfer’s Paradise in 2002, they probably never should have started it.
Not that I blame them for trying to make the show go on, the series is under pressure to get these events run in a reasonable TV window, and, at street circuits, to get off the streets so that they can be reopened to traffic.

It may (this is a complete guess, and I haven’t watched today’s race yet) have to do with the fact that when you’re racing in the rain on a street course, you’re probably a lot less willing to push the envelope of traction at every corner or try a possibly ill-advised pass. You do that at Sao Paulo or Toronto, you buy a heavy piece of concrete and your day is over. You do that at most areas of most F1 tracks, you can spin and continue. Just a theory.